4 ways Analytics as managed service can move the needle on your supply chain process

What is the most commonly used Supply Chain tool? Welcome to the harsh reality. It is still Microsoft Excel. Most of the enterprise has found their way out, but still most of the small case industries are stuck with the data and just with the data without insights or impact. Now, in this blog, let us discuss about the 4 places where analytics as a managed services can play a huge role in a better supply chain process where the conventional methods will not be off great help.

1. Price volatility

Market has become more and more volatile in the years than it was before 20 years. But with the increase in volatility, the ability to forecast and predict has also improved over the years. The price fluctuation that occurs, could be modelled with the macroeconomic analytics algorithms. With this capability, companies can hedge on commodity price fluctuation risk and turn risks into profit.

2. Improved Forecasts

Every supply chain process needs accurate forecasts as the whole process is highly dependent on these numbers. But these forecast numbers are highly influenced by both the internal and external factors. For example, the demand forecasts for a new gadget are heavily dependent on the gadgets that are released by the competitors, the time of the year it gets released or even who releases it (Pun definitely not intended). But this is a lot of information for a simple conventional tool to handle and therefore definitely requires a “pro”.

3. Dynamic Pricing

Every year on an average, one third of the parts have different procedures from the manufacturer but the price difference is small. Strong analytics modeling can help enterprises identify the discrete parameters of change and then include it in the new pricing.

4. What if scenarios

Imagine, if you have the ability to play with a tool that can allow simulating complex scenarios of build, book, ship and backlog? Conventional tools can’t help you do this but strong analytics team can help you simulate these complex scenarios.

Now, we know where supply chain analytics as a managed service can play a part but is that the way to go? BRIDGEi2i‘s Solve, Simplify and Sustain methodology establishes that it actually is. Lets go through the project lifecycle of a standard modeling project with the methodology.

Understanding Business: Nuances of businesses are never learnt in a day, in a hit and run situation, hit never assured most of the time. This explains the Solve paradigm.

Identify data and Create metrics: Identifying and creating the best data needs its time as it is the bread and butter for the next steps of the journey. Yeah, again Solve.

Model and Build Solution: A problem can be solved in a while but delivering the business impact requires sustenance. Now, we are getting into the domain of Solve and Simplify. Here we solve the problem using Modeling and we simplify it using analytics application building. This can be anything ranging from Mobile app development to SFDC app creation.

Institutionalization: Value realization needs a complete institutionalization of the problem. With business units working in silos, they won’t get the best value for the buck. This is the last and the most important part, the Sustaining. In simple words, you cannot have an app without maintenance, right? Similarly, effective, impactful Analytics cannot be delivered if it is not delivered as a managed service!

Analytics in the supply chain world is in a very nascent stage and where people are finding it tough to build skills for solution implementation and algorithm development. But in these tough situation, analytics as a managed service can play a greater role.

Any organization that possesses analytical capability has a magic wand in its hand, but for those that don’t possess the capability, it does matter, they still can have a Genie at their command through managed services!

For more queries, please feel free to contact us. And also watch out for the part 2 of this blog to understand more about the process we follow in accomplishing this mammoth task.

This blog is written by Alagiri Samy, Analytics Consultant at BRIDGEi2i

About BRIDGEi2i:BRIDGEi2iprovides Business Analytics Solutions to enterprises globally, enabling them to achieve accelerated business impact harnessing the power of data. Our analytics services and technology solutions enable business managers to consume more meaningful information from big data, generate actionable insights from complex business problems and make data driven decisions across pan-enterprise processes to create sustainable business impact. To know more visit www.bridgei2i.com

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The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position or viewpoint of BRIDGEi2i.